This multidisciplinary, basic science and translational research conference will be held April 12-14, 2002 in an Univ. of North Carolina conference center on the edge of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The goal of the meeting is to promote communication and interaction between investigators who are studying different, yet related fields. Both established and junior investigators will participate and participants will reflect ethnic and gender diversity. The meeting will be divided into the following major foci: 1) physical characteristics and cellular sources of collagen, 2) regulation of fibrosis by immune cells/inflammatory mediators, 3) cytokine/growth factor signaling and collagen gene regulation and 4) insights from animal models into the pathogenesis and prospects for therapy of clinical disease. A unique aspect of the meeting is the confluence of parallel investigative pathways of fibrogenesis in the intestine and liver, with a common thread of activation of hepatic stellate cells and intestinal myofibroblasts/fibroblasts and regulation of collagen gene expression by products of immune/inflammatory cells. Although new pathogenic insights are rapidly unfolding in each of these separate disciplines, investigators in disparate areas rarely, if ever, communicate with each other. We hope that formal presentations by investigators at the forefront of each field with questions and observations from elite scientists offering different perspectives and from discriminating clinical investigators will invigorate all fields and lead to new paradigms for future multidisciplinary investigations. Furthermore, 2 days of close interaction between senior and junior investigators, between basic and clinical investigators and between peers from diverse areas who have not previously met should promote new collaborations which should energize the entire field. This multidisciplinary conference is timely because each individual area is rapidly advancing. The biology and physiology of hepatic stellate cells and homologous intestinal myofibroblasts are developing in parallel, with similar conceptual frameworks but rare interactions between the 2 disciplines. Similarly, investigators have achieved important insights into immunoregulation and signaling by cytokines, growth factors, chemokines, T cells and innate immune cells. Finally, the concluding session will provide clinical relevance with in vivo mechanistic observations in rodent models, with emphasis on potential therapeutic targets.